This book, the discourse of Melchior Cano, and the Dominicans, caused him to be accused as favouring the heresy of the _Illuminati_. Neither his merit, nor his near relationship to the king, would have saved him from the prisons of Valladolid, if he had not hastened to Rome the moment he was informed that his trial had commenced, and that his enemies would endeavour to secure his person. He escaped from the Inquisition, but he had the mortification of seeing his work twice placed in the Index, in 1559 and in 1583. Juan de Ribera was a natural son of Don Pedro Afan de Ribera, Duke of Alcala, and Viceroy of Naples and Catalonia. In 1568, he passed from the bishopric of Badajoz to the archbishopric of Valencia. His life was irreproachable; but his great charity and ardent zeal, in endeavouring to reform the clergy, made him many enemies. In 1570 Philip II. commanded him to visit the University of Valencia, and reform some of its rules. The archbishop began to fulfil his commission, but offended some of the doctors, who conspired against him. They circulated defamatory libels concerning him, during a whole year, and the affair was carried so far that a monk prayed for his conversion publicly in the church of Valencia. Ribera was denounced to the Inquisition, as a heretic, fanatic, and one of the _Illuminati_. St. Juan de Ribera would not demand the punishment of his slanderers; but the procurator-fiscal being informed that Onuphrius Gacet, a member of the college, was the principal author of the intrigue, denounced him to the provisor and vicar-general of the archbishop. Gacet being convicted, was imprisoned. The archbishop did not think it proper that a judge belonging to his own household should take cognizance of offences which concerned him personally; and in order to remove all suspicion of partiality, he wished that the trial should be transferred to the Inquisition of Valencia, as some of the libels and texts of Scripture were employed in so scandalous a manner, that they came under the jurisdiction of the tribunal.